Recommendation 10

The cost tracker purposefully excludes some financial decisions that government has taken as a result of the pandemic to support the recovery from the pandemic, for example the corporation tax super deduction and increases in capital spending that were announced in Budget 2020. It also does not include the effect of COVID-19 on receipts to public finances. HM Treasury told us that it is better that the scope of the cost tracker remains as it is, and that wider effects of the pandemic are covered elsewhere, for example in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts. The cost tracker is therefore a good measure of the gross cost of government’s policy response to the pandemic, but there are broader measures of the overall cost of the pandemic that could be drawn.12